A Spender's Story

I have credit card debt. Lots of it. Why? Because I suck at life. Just kidding, but being in debt as far as I am makes me feel that way sometimes. I got into credit cards knowing they were evil, knowing I was just digging a whole, and knowing I was make life for my future self harder. And I didn't care. Strike that, I always felt guilt putting "stuff" on credit - it just didn't seem to matter that much.

Fast forward nine years, a layoff, a house payment, and a huge pay cut later...

I know that this is my (huge) mistake, and I intend to fix it, but a very large lifestyle change is on the horizon in order to do that. I've been slowly meandering in that direction, but always with self-imposed setbacks. Now is the time to buckle down, knuckle up, and get rid of the debt once and for all.

I'm not sure how I'm going to reduce my monthly expenses enough to afford my house on my new salary (if there even is a "new salary", I'm contracting at the moment).

I have already dumped cable+HBO, all subscriptions and monthly-pay games (*cough*eve-online*cough*). I've gone from eating out almost every day to once per week. That one's going to go now too. I've just gotten out of my Cingular/AT&T contract, and while I'd like to scale back my service - I'm also not eager to sign another 2 year deal. I'd rather be a free agent. I'm going to shop around and see what I can do in person. I've found I definitely do not need the feature-rich package I currently have.

I'm a little nervous, since I've shredded the credit cards, about how all of this will work out. I know that at the moment I don't make enough to pay all of my bills, let alone eat, drive, etc. I'm pretty sure I'll survive, but I can already see that this is going to be very hard to do without going further into debt. A part-time after-work job may be in order. I want to see after a month or so how things are going.

So, this is how it feels at the bottom.